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Getting Ready for Snow Leopard

Note that I didn’t say “whether.”

Apple has announced that their new system for the Mac — Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” — will become available this Friday, 08.26.09.

Apple typically delivers big with their upgrades. Since I started watching more closely in 1993, each new major version of their OS [operating system] has been a massive improvement, and inevitably a must-have. Indeed, since any new Mac will come with the latest system, you have to spend effort to avoid it.

This OS X 10.6, however, was not designed the way most big revisions are. It has been promoted as a “performance” upgrade. Much like the latest iPhone model, Apple has focused not on bells and whistles, but on the need for speed. It purports to make a Mac “faster, more reliable, and easier to use.” The reports that have come since 10.6 was in released to software developers, and reviews in the media this week, have been stellar, affirming that Snow Leopard is slicker, smoother, snappier, and more stable.

Well, sign me up! Right?

SHORT ANSWER: Hang tight, McCoy. Don’t buy Snow Leopard on Friday. Wait two or three months, and then ask around, check MacFixIt, or call me.

Also, if you’re one of our clients, we respectfully request that you read the following before buying 10.6, installing it, then calling us to say, “Help, it’s not working!”

Now, the proper answer:

I’m not going to delve into the specific improvements Apple has made. Their OS X page spells out the big stuff, highlighting the “refinements,” the geeky details of the underlying technologies, promising additions for those with disabilities, and the new compatibility with Microsoft Exchange services. That last, if it works, could be huge for shoehorning the Mac deeper into the workplace.

For a more thorough digest, Wired has “6 Things You Need to Know About Mac OS X Snow Leopard” and I really dug on some of the little features on page 2 of this ComputerWorld article.

So, the nut: When should you, dear reader, consider the switch?

Consideration 1: Hardware. Snow Leopard will work on any Mac with an Intel processor, which includes most Macs purchased since January 2006. If you have a pre-2006 Mac, please review “my standard spiel” in this post. If you buy a new Mac, it’ll come installed with Snow Leopard.

While Apple officially requires 1 GB RAM, we always recommend that you put as much RAM in your Mac as budget and specifications allow. Any Mac purchased since 2007 should have at least 4 GB RAM.

Snow Leopard significantly reduces the hard disk space taken up by the operating system, the “footprint.” You’ll need 5 GB of available space on your startup disk, down from Leopard’s 9. Shweet! Note that you won’t reclaim the savings until after installation; in other words, the install has to complete before you learn what will get deleted. But word up, yo: if you don’t have at least 10 GB free on your drive at all times, you’re playing with fire. I peg my upper tolerance at 90% full.

Consideration 2: Price. OS X 10.6 will cost a very affordable $29 for any Mac with Leopard 10.5, or $49 for a “Family Pack” of five licenses. Apple’s previous updates have retailed at a standard $129. Thirty dollars says that Apple believes that everyone currently running 10.5 will benefit from this upgrade. That’s a bold and generous move, considering the pain and expense that Microsoft has put their users through with the much-maligned Vista, and the imminent, costly Windows 7.

If you purchased a Mac after June 7, you qualify for Apple’s $9.95 Up-to-Date program.

Consideration 3: Compatibility, or Will It Work? Probably, yes, but if you’re in a production environment, using apps such as Adobe Creative Suite, you will want to wait until all the reports are in. (Adobe guarantees nothing about CS3, but supports CS4 as 10.6-friendly.) If you have any kind of specialized hardware or software, you will really want to test it out in Snow Leopard, running from a separate hard drive, or on a machine that no one else is using.

This guy has a too pessimistic but nonetheless practical view of how compatible new releases typically are.

Consideration 4: Process.

!!!!! For the love of Mike, please backup Backup BACKUP all your stuff. Run both your daily incremental Users backup and your weekly HD clone. !!!!!

Lifehacker has a nice rundown about how to go about the upgrade. And Engadget reports that the Archive and Install that I have previously recommended may be moot.

DID YOU BACKUP YET?

Consideration 5: Trust. Early adoption is fun, but early adoption can also be an adventure, and any good adventure involves risk, exhilaration, sweat, swearing, glee, despair.

Your Humble was one of the fools who bought an iPhone 3G on day one. !@#!@*$&#(%&#$)$*$*T#&R(*$#$#@!$!#@$&(!#@$!!!!!!!! Similarly, I remember too painfully how Leopard Server completely chewed up Apple File Sharing, all the way through version 10.5.2. Like a freakin’ sushi chef who can’t cook rice. Sheesh.

On the other hand, Leopard client itself was pretty smooth, and iPhone 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS were nearly flawless.

Mac users typically see reward for sticking with the platform, but we don’t need anything screwing up productivity in our profit centers. Therefore, my official recommendation to our clients is to wait until at least 10.6.2 before you start rolling out Snow Leopard, especially to non-geek family members or co-workers who would have a hard time working around problems.

I can think of several options to offset the risk of trusting Apple: Maybe you have a second workstation to can test 10.6 on. I am going to clone my server to an external drive, and do a fresh install, because servers have so far always wanted that. I could also run a completely separate test copy on a cheap external hard drive.

[END LONG ANSWER]

You can guess that I can’t wait to put the new system on my second MacBook Pro, and on my Server. I’m gonna like poking around and discovering all the new goodies, and the finessed details. I know, that, in the short or the long term, it will do well by our Macs, and by our trust.

Y’all enjoy!

Transfer an iPhoto book project to another Mac

My son is working on an iPhoto book of his trip to Belgium in May. It’s a great project for him, laying out text and pictures. He’s working on my iMac with my iPhoto Library. If he doesn’t finish before we go on vacation this week, is there any way to transfer the project to my MacBook?

To move a book project, you gotta transfer the entire iPhoto library to your MacBook, which just means that there has to be enough room. You can tell iPhoto to switch libraries by holding down the option key when you first start iPhoto (i.e. it has to not be running first). You’ll see a window like this:

If one ever needed to get fancier, one can download the $20 iPhoto Libary Manager.

This Apple thread has some more discussion.

At that point, I would consider the libary on your iMac to be off-limits until you get back home. That way, if you also choose to do any work in iPhoto once you’ve got it on your laptop, you can copy everything back to the iMac. Please make a discrete backup of the original library to your external hard drive, perhaps calling it “iPhoto Library old.” I realize Time Machine stores versions of your library, but it will start to delete older versions after a while, and I would prefer that you didn’t take the chance.

Completely backup iPhone, iPad, and iPod

This is a good, safe, butt-covering thing to do before running an iOS software update, or before you migrate to a new device. iCloud backups are an enormous convenience, but I subscribe to Murphy’s Law, as well as the 3-2-1 Rule of Backups, so I like to maintain a backup of my iPhones and iPads in iTunes on one of my Macs:

First and always, make sure you have good backups of your Mac.

Then, clean out your old iOS backups in iTunes:

Click on the iTunes menu, and go to Preferences…
Click on Devices.
In the list of Device Backups, with the dates, look for duplicate backups of your devices. Note the most recent backup, and leave it alone.
Now click on each of the other backups, and below, click the button called Delete Backup.
Do that for each duplicate backup, leaving only the most recent ones.
Hit OK.

iTunes will take a bit of time to delete those files. You may see the rainbow beach ball.

Now, near the top of the iTunes window, under the search box, click on your iPhone or iPad. On the main Summary page, make sure that Encrypt iPhone Backups is turned on. If it’s not, click the checkbox, and enter a password. (As long as you choose Remember Password in Keychain, you can pick anything.)

iTunes will now run a full backup of your iOS device, including passwords for your sync accounts and wifi networks.

The new iPhone: to buy or or not to buy

Everybody has now caught wind of the excellent new iPhone software and hardware coming this month. All current iPhone owners will be able to download the new OS 3.0 for free on June 17.
The question I’m getting asked now is whether one should buy the new phone, or will one be happy simply updating their existing hardware with the new system?

I won’t delve into all the new features, some of which will be available to all iPhones, and some which will only come with the new iPhone 3GS. (Sidenote: I’m not going to type it “3G S”, ‘cos I think it looks stupid.) The Unofficial Apple Weblog has done a fine writeup of most of the new features, and of course you can see Apple’s pages on the iPhone 3GS and on the iPhone OS 3.0 for full lists.

Out of everything announced for the iPhone, cut, copy, and paste is far and away the most important new feature, one that most of us feel we should have had from the get-go. I’ve finally gotten to play with it myself, and it works beautifully, and solidifies the iPhone’s position as the must-have gadget of the moment. And it will be available on every iPhone in existence, and that makes us happy.

The features that are coming only to the new iPhone 3GS, the big ones at least, are faster phone operations, voice control, a digital compass (enabling turn-by-turn directions, among other things), a much improved camera, and shooting/editing/sharing video. (I just read they’ve added an “fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating” to the screen. So maybe we don’t want to put film on this time, although I really like my anti-glare screen.)

Honestly, they had me at “speed.” I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with the time it takes to go from one app on the iPhone to another. Apple has optimized things a little in OS 3.0 — contacts searching is noticeably quicker — but my iPhone 3G still feels sluggish. So, with a better processor and more RAM, the new iPhone holds much promise for the more impatient among us.

So, could I be happy with my current iPhone? Yes. 3.0 makes it a much, much better device.

Am I going to buy a new iPhone? Yes. In fact, YES! I am looking forward to turn-by-turn directions and voice control… although I really want to be able to say “new email to bob smith,” and start transcription, and it doesn’t look like we’re there yet.

Am I going to buy the iPhone 3GS when it comes out? Not… just… yet.

Here’s the deal: The $199 & $299 prices announced for the 16GB and 32GB models, respectively, are the “subsidized” prices, i.e. the price that you pay if (a) you enter into a new 2-year contract with AT&T, or (b) if you are already under contract, and you bought your last subsidized phone more than a year ago.

The iPhone 3G hit the shelves July 11, 2008. Today is June 13, 2009 (6 days before the iPhone 3GS release). I have confirmed with AT&T that anyone who bought an iPhone 3G at the subsidized price won’t qualify for the lower price on a 3GS for at least a month, July 13 at the earliest.

Some folks have been misled by going to Apple’s “Buy an iPhone” page, because it doesn’t give you the above information, and does give you the impression that you’re gonna pay the full $400 or $500 price for a 3GS. Unfortunately, some news outlets fanned the flames of false information.

The nice part about that wait is that I’m forced to be patient and let everybody else experience the good and the bad of the new phone. I’m sure it’ll be fine, but last year’s iPhone Day 1 was quite a mess, with the new MobileMe service and everybody activating at once, and the very buggy 2.0 software.

A final note: I just sold my 1st-generation iPhone 2G for $220 on craigslist, and there are, right now, listings for 3G phones as high as $400. Tip: An older phone is more valuable if you unlock and jailbreak it. (Call us at 210.787.2709 for assistance.) So one can potentially turn a profit in getting a new phone.

iPhone abroad

I learned something useful about the iPhone when I was out of the country recently. I wanted to use the phone’s wifi Internet, but I didn’t want to make or receive calls on it, and get charged the ridiculous per-minute rates. AT&T tried to sell me the $6/month “World Traveler” plan, in which your international roaming rates are simply somewhat less appalling. (I learned, also, that I would have paid even for incoming calls that I didn’t accept, and data rates for voicemails that I didn’t listen to. Stinkers!)
Anyway, here’s what I did:

1) Upon boarding your plane, ship, hovercanoe, what-have-you, turn on Airplane mode: Home > Settings > set Airplane Mode to ON.

2) Then, when you get to a wifi connection (and your vessel is increasingly likely to have one), go back to Home > Settings > Wi-Fi, and turn on Wi-Fi, then choose whatever network is available, for which you either have or don’t need a password.

This worked like a charm to get me email, surfing, local restaurant reviews, etc. I was only surprised that GPS didn’t work. The major BONUS was that, the day I arrived in the other country, Skype released it’s free iPhone app, so I was able to make calls back to the States really cheaply, whenever I had Internet. ¡Que suave!

Is 5GB of mobile broadband a month enough for most people?

First off:
1024 bytes = 1 KB (kilobyte)
1024 KB = 1 MB (megabyte)
1024 MB = 1 GB (gigabyte)
1024 GB = 1 TB (terabyte)

It’s hard to peg the average size of a web page (so, one person’s profile on Facebook, for example). Easy to say a range between 80 and 300 KB. (This is an interesting page: Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003.)

Very broad and arbitrary size ranges for other kinds of files:

Photos found on the internet: 100 KB – 2 MB
Higher-resolution images: 2 – 15 MB.
Song files run between 2 – 15 MB.
A half-hour of video, maybe 150 – 175 MB.
A 90-minute movie, 500 MB – 1 GB

So, to the question:

5GB is fine for phones with internet (c.f. articles 1 & 2).

On a computer, however, 5GB may or may not be fine (c.f. article 3 is from a geekier perspective).

I go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay past 5 GB a month. I ain’t even going to guess a number. If you only look at static web pages — ones with no videos — and nobody sends you emails with pictures or videos in them, and you don’t download any music or audio-visual material… you likely won’t hit 5GB.

Here’s the important question for your carrier: Is there a way to monitor how much you’ve used up to the current moment in the billing cycle?

1. Beta News: Sprint says 5 GB per month should be enough for most

2. Yahoo! Answers: Is 5GB enough for a normal use on a laptop for broadband access using a USB Card?

3. Buzz Out Loud Lounge: Would 5 GB be enough for you?

Junk Mail mode in Apple Mail

I lost my junk mail icon – how do I get it back to teach my inbox what is junk?

Mail menu > Preferences > Junk Mail

Set it to automatically Move it to the Junk mailbox, as opposed to what used to be called Training mode, which is now, in Leopard the Mark it as junk mail, but leave it in my Inbox setting.

But before you do, I would suggest leaving it in Training mode for a bit, and clicking the Junk/Not Junk button. In fact, one will initially need to train Apple Mail to recognize legit mail — newsletters and such — by clicking Not Junk.

I’ve always said a month, but that’s an arbitrary guess on my part, and is contingent on someone being vigilant about clicking the Junk/Not Junk button. Stay in Training mode until you are confident that it’s catching junk mail correctly by marking junk mail brown, and leaving non-junk along.

Make sure that you add any trusted correspondents to your address book (Message menu > Add Sender to Address Book (⌘⇧Y)) to prevent them from being mis-identified as spam.

Gmail, if you use it, and you should be using it, will catch most of the spam most of the time, but that’s how you deal with the rest.

Backup Address Book & iCal, and troubleshoot syncing

Just a quick note of instructions for Leopard.
1) Backup Address Book
File > Export > Address Book Archive …
Agree to the default file name, saving it with a date

2) Backup iCal
File > Backup iCal
Agree to the default file name, saving it with a date

3) Quit all applications on the iMac.
Then open iSync in Applications.
iSync menu > Reset Sync Data
Reboot

4) Let syncing happen. If it comes up with conflicts, review them, and choose the item in each conflict most likely to be accurate.

VirtualBox + Windows 7 Test Drive = smoothness

Just installed Sun’s virtualizer VirtualBox — a free, open-source alternative to Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion — and then created a virtual machine for the Test Drive of Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC).
VirtualBox is easily acquired and installed. Microsoft required a hotmail/live.com registration to download Windows 7 … I think I had a hotmail account back before Mr. Softee snatched ’em, but despite my misgivings, I registered with my real address.

Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to dig into Windows, and I don’t have nearly enough Benadryl on hand for that anyway, but I am very pleased that VirtualBox installs and works basically as smoothly as either of its non-free competitors. I hope VMWare and Parallels have recouped their development costs for their products.

The Shipping News

From a review of a hard drive at newegg.com. S/he was done with listing Pros and Cons and then said this very helpful tip:

Other Thoughts: Here’s a suggestion for anyone buying a hard drive, go with FedEx, the express saver is the cheapest. I know it cost more than UPS and Newegg’s “free shipping” isn’t FedEx, but here’s the deal: I have bought over 30 hard drives (Western Digital and Seagate) through Newegg in the past 2 years, 100% of the ones shipped FedEx are still running, 80% of the ones shipped UPS were either DOA or failed within 6 months. UPS beats the He11 out of their shipments, even their website states that every package is subject to a 6 foot drop. Do the math, free shipping or cheaper UPS shipping isn’t free in the long run. I ship my non-fragile items with the free shipping, but I do a separate order and use FedEx for hard drives and motherboards.